By J. Dwight, Sun Journal
When you listen to those who say that human-caused global-warming is a fact, you will hear statements like “The science is settled,” and “We should defer to what the scientists say.” So, the question is, is it science, or cult science? First, let me explain why a writer whose column is titled “Populist Economics” is musing about climate science. The reason is The-Mother-of-All-Environmental-Laws —climate-change legislation— is coming.
Every time an environmental law is passed, politicians affect the choices of your life and opportunities you have to get a job, make money to support yourself and your family. Frankly, to this observer, the most of the environmental laws passed are detrimental to those ends, and ironically, do little to protect the environment or people, and, in fact, may actually harm them. One recent example was the forced introduction of MTBE additive to gasoline by Angus King during his governorship. He eventually made the correct decision to withdraw the order, but not before wells and aquifers were poisoned.
The same may be true of wind-powered electricity today. King may realize that before Maine’s mountains, coastlines and economy are gutted. But don’t count on it. He stands to make too much money. Let’s go back to the premise behind climate-change legislation and wind-powered electricity: global-warming.
Is it science? Next time someone says global warming is human-caused, ask them to cite their source. Usually they’ll say something like, “Everyone says it’s true,’” or “Didn’t you watch Al Gore’s movie?”: or some other vapid reason.
After that, they’ll cite some governmental report like the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or a report by NASA or NOAA that says the last 10 years were “the warmest in history.” Well, the studies may have been done by scientists, but aren’t very scientific. The scientists who did the IPCC study can’t produce the original data they based their work on, just the adjusted data. Kind of like the kid who says “the dog ate my homework.”
A report issued on April 14 by The Center for Science and Public Policy found the NASA/NOAA study to be faulty. These scientists, the report claims, reduced the number of temperature stations over the period of the study from 6,000 to less than 1,500. They systematically removed the colder rural, mountain, and northern weather stations, but they left in the warmer urban, airport and coastal stations, the report asserts.
This skewed the average temperature data upward. As Joe D’Aleo, one of the authors of the study wrote, “Also, most of the stations did not meet the government’s own criteria for siting, which also produced a warm bias. Had proper adjustments been made to correct for these data source issues, they would have found what we see when we look at well sited rural stations, cyclical changes but no net warming. This means climate change is real, but natural. Instead these issues were ignored and the data was manipulated in ways to introduce and enhance a net warming,” D’Aleo said.
Human-induced bias is what forced the temperature averages upward, not CO2 emissions. That is unscientific. Are we supposed to trust the “science guys” that can’t find their homework, or people whose pay and jobs are dependent on unscientific methods and manipulated data?
In doing these things, they have destroyed the credibility of climate science. Yet, all of our congressional representatives believe in this man-made myth. They and their staffs are all working on passing climate-change legislation. Such laws will negatively impact the choices you and your family will have and be able to make. Climate change legislation will change the price, quality and quantity of the food you buy, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the vacations you take—everything.
Several thousand high-paying jobs will be lost to better locations overseas. If such legislation as the Waxman-Markey Bill (or now Kerry/Graham, Lieberman), supported by Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), or the Senate’s Clear Act, supported by Sens. Collin and Snowe, pass, those jobs will go. The managers and employees of Maine-based high-tech companies have warned our congressional representatives and their staffs of this fact. Yet, they ignore these real warnings.
Higher unemployment, higher taxes and higher costs will be the result. Fewer quality job opportunities and a dim future await our children, while they and their staffs continue in high-paying tax-payer funded jobs that offer fully paid health care and lavish retirements, with all the perks and trappings of wealth and power. Our representatives would seem to prefer to play games with our lives and our children’s lives to seemingly satisfy their greedy penchant for power and prestige. Is this is their version of “social justice?”
They act like the fortune tellers at the fair, intoning concern over “serious dangers” and divine dire doom and disaster caused by global warming. “We must appease the angry god of global warming for the good of the earth and humanity,” they say. Look, we all like a good show, but we can choose to not to enter their tent, let them con us out of our money or be alarmed by their dread tales and superstitions. Suffice to say, when climate scientists and their political hawkers start acting like soothsayers and three-card monty dealers, it is time to shut down the carnival. Better yet, vote them out of office and remove their staffs.
By Eli Kintisch
You’re likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there’s a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution. That’s right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.
Cleaner air, one of the signature achievements of the U.S. environmental movement, is certainly worth celebrating. Scientists estimate that the U.S. Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant called sulfate aerosols, for example, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems.
But even as industrialized and developing nations alike steadily reduce aerosol pollution—caused primarily by burning coal—climate scientists are beginning to understand just how much these tiny particles have helped keep the planet cool. A silent benefit of sulfates, in fact, is that they’ve been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Emerging science suggests that their underappreciated impact has been incredible.
Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. Thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, however, the planet has only felt a portion of that greenhouse warming. In the 1980s, sulfate pollution dropped as Western nations enhanced pollution controls, and as a result, global warming accelerated.
There’s hot debate over the size of what amounts to a cooling mask, but there’s no question that it will diminish as industries continue to clean traditional pollutants from their smokestacks. Unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last for a week at most in the air. So cutting them would probably accelerate global warming rapidly.
In a recent paper in the journal Climate Dynamics, modelers forecast what would happen if nations instituted all existing pollution controls on industrial sources and vehicles by 2030. They found the current rate of warming—roughly 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade—doubled worldwide, and nearly tripled in North America.
Despite intransigence on carbon emissions, even China is taking aggressive steps to cut sulfate pollution, and temperatures have risen as a result.
But surely the answer can’t be to slow our drive to clean our air. One way to buy time might be to tackle another air pollutant that warms the planet: soot. In 2008, scientists estimated that so-called black carbon, soot’s prime component, is responsible for 60% more global warming above that caused by greenhouse gases. Cleaner-burning diesel engines in the West and more efficient cookstoves in the developing world are the answer. But on both scores, “relatively little has been done to address the problem,” says the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force.
In the face of severe climate risks, credible scientists are beginning to study geo-engineering—tinkering with global systems to reduce warming directly. One scheme is to spew sulfates or other sun-blocking particles miles high in the stratosphere. If it worked, it would mimic the natural cooling effect of volcanoes, replacing the near-surface sulfate mask with a much higher one. But the possible side effects could be dire, including damage to the ozone layer. The potential geopolitical implications, like wars over the thermostat, could be devastating as well.
We might need geo-engineering to stave off the worst effects of the warming. But most climate scientists think we’re not there yet. And so the most important thing we can do now is to train our sights on both the unexpectedly helpful sulfates and the unexpectedly pernicious carbon. We can’t continue to only focus on traditional pollutants without reducing greenhouse emissions. We simply have to find a way to clean our air of both.
By Tom Nelson
Tom Smitheringale’s Record Breaking, Unaided North Pole Expedition
Part of the reason Tom’s One Man Epic is taking place now is because of the effect that global warming is having on the polar ice caps. Over the past 20 years, scientists have noticed that our world is heating up. As the great
polar ice floes melt, sea levels are slowly rising and the huge glaciers are becoming weaker and weaker. Some scientists have even estimated that the polar ice cap will have entirely melted away by 2014!
April 5: Frostbite
Tom Smitheringale’s frostbitten thumbs caused him a lot of pain, so much so that he decided to ask for an evacuation. After several phone calls and some rest he cancelled his decision and is more than ever determined to carry on.
April 7: Smitheringale’s frostbite setback - ABC Perth - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Tom Smitheringale’s One Man Epic trek across the Arctic has suffered a setback as agonising frostbite settles in.
April 16: Australian rescued by Canadian Forces after Arctic accident
Although the weather was favourable for the rescue mission, Smitheringale was about 460 kilometres northwest of Canadian Forces Station Alert - the edge of the operating range of the two twin otter search planes and civilian helicopter that were dispatched to the accident site, said Robert.
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Smitheringale was picked up around 9 p.m. Thursday and transported to CFS Alert suffering from hypothermia and frostbite in his extremities, said Robert.
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Smitheringale, who had already trekked nearly 300 kilometres and had endured temperatures as low as -50 degrees Celsius over the previous 46 days, is expected to be evacuated from CFS Alert to a civilian hospital on Friday.
THE ANTARCTIC
Meanwhile,. Ross Hays, from NASA tells us temperatures just reached -100F in Vostok Antarctica, unusually cold for the early fall. No melting going in there. Vostok has the world record of -128.6°F July 21, 1983 (July like our NH January).
By Margaret Wente
Lots of folks are thrilled by Ontario’s big new investment in clean energy. Among them is Jim Creeggan, who plays bass guitar for the Barenaked Ladies. That’s because the government is going to pay him to put solar panels on his roof. “It’s a thrill to be able to power my own lights while, at the same time, contributing to my city’s electrical needs,” he enthuses. “I’m glad solar power is getting out of the fringe and into the mainstream.”
Should the rest of us be enthused? Maybe not. In solar terms, Toronto is not exactly Southern California. Even there, nobody has figured out how to make solar power cheap. The government will pay Mr. Creeggan and other solar producers around 80 cents a kilowatt hour for the power they sell back to the grid. That’s about 15 times more than the current spot price that consumers now pay for power. The difference will eventually show up on their electricity bills. Welcome to the wacky world of green power, where misguided governments have sparked a massive corporate feeding frenzy (at taxpayers’ expense) to achieve little or nothing of any social benefit. This week, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced $8-billion more in green investments, on top of the $7-billion he announced a short while ago. He’s determined to outspend B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, who also wants to be the king of green.
The heart of their strategy is to pay massive subsidies to wind, solar and other renewable energy producers - many of them large multinational corporations - for the next 20 years. Some people think this is a terrible idea. One of them is George Monbiot, the environmental firebrand in Britain, which has just introduced its own subsidy scheme. “The feed-in tariffs [the rates paid to power generators such as Mr. Creeggan] about to be introduced here are extortionate, useless and deeply regressive,” he fumed. “The technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient.”
Michael Trebilcock, a professor of law and economics at the University of Toronto, figures that the cost of renewables will average out at two to three times the cost of conventional power. Large wind producers, for example, will get 13.5 cents a kWh (and small producers will get more). These costs will be fed through to industrial, commercial and residential consumers through additional charges on their electricity bills. There will be additional costs to extend the transmission grid. And that means consumers are about to get a nasty shock. Ontario’s Energy Minister said soothingly this week that the green scheme will add only a few dollars a year to people’s hydro bills. But energy costs were already that the green scheme will add only a few dollars a year to people’s hydro bills. But energy costs were already set to spike by 25 per cent, and energy experts say households will soon be paying several hundred dollars more
a year. “The government is sitting on a political time bomb,” says Peter Murphy, a Toronto energy lawyer.
Green-energy advocates say the extra cost is worth it. Renewable energy will reduce our use of fossil fuels, cut down on greenhouse-gas emissions, and bolster the economy by kicking off a new era of green jobs. Don’t bet your solar panel on it. Renewables simply can’t produce the large volumes of reliable energy that our economy needs. “These energy sources are so intermittent and unreliable that you have to have backup power at all times,” says Prof. Trebilcock. For every wind farm we build, we’ll have to have a coal or gas-fired power station waiting in the wings to take over when it’s 20 below. “I think we’ll get next to nothing on carbon dioxide abatement,” he says.
Mr. Monbiot agrees. Germany, he says, has spent 1.2-billion Euros on solar roofs. Their total contribution to the country’s electricity supply was 0.4 per cent. Their total contribution to carbon savings is zero. But what about green jobs? The McGuinty government confidently predicts that its green scheme will create 50,000 of them. Don’t believe it. Some will be temporary construction jobs. Some other jobs will disappear because higher electricity costs will make Ontario less competitive. And many of the new jobs will be extremely costly to create. In Denmark, the wind-power darling of the world, subsidies per net job created have amounted to $90,000 to $149,000 a year, according to one independent study. In Germany, job subsidies have cost as much as $249,000 a year.
So who are the winners? The companies that harvest the subsidies. They’re flocking to Ontario like fruit flies to a bowl of overripe peaches. The government is trying to create a feel-good story by showcasing the little guys - such as schools that want to install solar roofs, and native-run wind companies with names such as Mother Earth (despite the fact that little guys are the most inefficient operators of all). But it’s the big guys who are the
biggest winners - multinational corporations such as the Korean giant Samsung, with which Mr. McGuinty struck a $7-billion deal, and Brookfield Renewable Power, which plans to generate more power than all the little guys put together.
The world is littered with cautionary tales about subsidized renewables and overblown promises. Spain went wild on solar, and set off a speculative boom. Inefficient, poorly designed plants popped up everywhere. The lavish subsidies inflated costs. When Spain plunged into recession, the subsidies were ratcheted back, and the industry collapsed. Wind economics are shaky, too. In Britain, “too many developments are underperforming,” says Michael Jefferson, an expert on energy sustainability and economics. Wind developers, he says, have grossly exaggerated wind potential. “The subsidies make it viable for developers to put turbines on sites they would not touch if the money was not available.” As The Times of London notes, even environmentalists admit that some of Britain’s treasured landscapes may have been blighted for only small gains in green energy.
None of this has deterred Mr. McGuinty, who campaigned on the promise of shutting down Ontario’s coal-fired generating plants. Many in his own party now wonder how wise this was. His Green Energy Plan was rammed through by tough guy George Smitherman, who decamped to run for mayor of Toronto long before any chickens come home to roost.
Does this mean there’s nothing we can do to cut down on fossil fuel emissions? Not at all. Ontario has an abundant supply of clean energy that hasn’t yet been tapped - hydro. “There’s enough northern Canadian hydro power to satisfy Ontario’s needs for decades,” says Prof. Trebilcock. Ontario could impose a carbon tax,and invest the money in research to find ways of making green power less expensive. There’s also conservation and invest the money in research to find ways of making green power less expensive. There’s also conservation - more retrofitting and smart metering. But those are boring. Wind turbines and solar panels offer better photo ops.
“The solar panel is the ideal modern status symbol, which signifies both wealth and superiority, even if it’s perfectly useless,” writes Mr. Monbiot. “Seldom has there been a bigger public rip-off.” See post here.
By Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph
One of the best-kept secrets of British politics - although it is there for all to see on a Government website - is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, acccording to Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to 18.3 billion pounds, 760 pounds for every household in the country - as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent.
Last Thursday - with northern Britain again under piles of global warming - another tranche of regulations came into force, as this measure begins to take effect. New road tax rules mean that to put a larger, more CO2 - emitting car on the road will now cost 950 pounds. New “feed-in” subsidies for small-scale “renewables” mean that the installers of solar panels will be paid up to eight times the going rate for their miserable amount of electricity to be fed into the grid, with the overall bill for this scheme estimated eventually to be billions a year.
Not the least bizarre of the Government’s strategies, however, is Decc’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, requiring up to 30,000 of our largest energy users, such as ministries, councils, universities, hospitals, supermarket chains (and even “monasteries and nunneries"), to pay to register with the Environment Agency. Some 5,000 of them, using more than “6,000 megawatt hours” of electricity each year (equivalent to the needs of 1,250 homes), will then have to carry out a cumbersome audit of their carbon footprint, using “three different metrics”, in order to pay 12 pounds for each ton of CO2 they emit - at a total initial cost estimated at 1.4 billion pounds a year. This will eventually be contributed by all of us, either through taxes or, for instance, whenever we visit Tesco.
Even the 25,000 remaining non-participants in the scheme will still have to pay, between them, some 9.75 million pounds to register with the Environment Agency, doubtless so they can be brought into the net at a later date. Meanwhile, as indicated by Decc’s 100-page Carbon User’s Guide, the “carbon efficiency” performance of the 5,000 participants will place them in an annual league table, with the worst performers having to pay cash penalties, to be given as bonuses to those at the top.
In return for the millions paid to the agency in registration and annual “subsistence” fees, it is hiring an army of officials to carry out audits, to ensure that no one is cheating. Anyone who incorrectly records emissions or fails to submit the stacks of necessary documentation in time will be fined 5,000 plus 500 pounds a day, doubled after 40 days, with unlimited fines or up to two years in jail for more serious offences.
Recent studies show that, even though the first stage of this unbelievably complex scheme came into force on April Fools’ Day, more than half the enterprises liable to sign up are not yet aware of what is required of them - so the Government could be looking forward to a huge additional income from those fines.
Once the scheme is established, of course, the idea is that, in future, the total amount of CO2 emitted will be capped, pushing the cost of each ton of CO2 even higher. All this and much more, such as the 100 billion pounds the Government wants to see spent on useless wind farms, is designed to reduce Britain’s CO2 emissions within 40 years to where they were in the early 19th century.
Since we contribute less than 2 per cent of global emissions, while China continues to build a new coal-fired power station every week, these empty getures will do nothing to reduce the world’s overall “carbon footprint”. Not that this makes any difference to global warming anyway - but at least it will give the Government billions more pounds of our money, while we still have any of it left. See post (h/t SEPP).
By Laura Thompson Osuri
Philanthropic support for climate-change issues tripled in 2008. Global steps to battle climate change might have faltered, but philanthropic institutions in the United States have swung into action, more than tripling their support for climate-related causes in 2008. Donations jumped from the 2007 total of US$240 million to $897 million in 2008 according to a report from the Foundation Center, an organization that supports philanthropies, in New York.
FOUNDATION CENTER
The funding is going to a range of activities, including efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and to prepare cities for warmer temperatures and higher sea levels. Foundation money is also supporting academic researchers studying the effects of climate change and ways to reduce pollution. In 2008, for example, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York gave a grant to Stanford University in California for studies on how agriculture could adapt to a changing climate. The ClimateWorks Foundation in San Francisco, California, is supporting research around the world, including a grant to Wang Lan, a materials scientist at the China Building Materials Academy in Beijing, who is working to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from cement production.
The vast majority of the increase in 2008 came from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, which gave a total of $549 million. Hewlett’s donations included a one-time contribution of $500 million to ClimateWorks, which aims to help countries limit carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to less than 450 parts per million.
Many other foundations also bumped up their spending. All told, 267 foundations other than Hewlett distributed 1,578 grants for climate change, representing a 45% increase in their giving compared with 2007, according to the Foundation Center report, which is entitled Climate Change: The U.S. Foundation Response.
A generational change may account for part of the sudden generosity. Baby boomers are showing more concern about climate change than previous generations did, says Rachel Leon, executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association in New York, a trade group of environmentally focused foundations. These people are now starting to set up their own foundations with a strong emphasis on climate change.
The efforts of the foundations pale next to commercial investment in clean energy - $173 billion in 2008 and $162 billion last year, according to market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. But foundations can fund projects regardless of their potential pay-off, says Ethan Zindler, the company’s head of US research. “They view it as a social imperative,” he says. ClimateWorks, for example, collaborates with smaller foundations around the world on projects including the development of vehicle-fuel standards in India and appliance standards in China.
Other efforts aim to help developing countries adapt to change. Under a five-year, $70-million commitment in 2007, Rockefeller established the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, which focuses on aiding smaller cities, such as Surat in India, make growth decisions that help them survive a shifting climate. “We are not really an environmental foundation but a poverty-reduction foundation. But we see a connection between them,” says Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, an associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation.
None of the foundations contacted by Nature would say what it plans to give in 2010. Because Hewlett will not repeat its $500-million, one-time donation, the total foundation support for climate-related causes is likely to drop from its 2008 high, but Steven Lawrence, the director of research for the Foundation Center and the author of the new report, expects funding this year to surpass the 2007 amount. “My expectation is to continue to see growth in giving.”
See more here.
What a travesty. So much good could be done with this money rather than forcing the third world to unnecessarily conform to even stricter standards than we impose on ourselves to address a non threat when these people have real needs that will go unmet.
By Dr. Michael Economides
The best strategy in poker involves tricking your opponent into thinking they have the upper hand, while secretly maintaining an advantage. Recent statements from the White House indicate its political strategy on energy employs a similar variety of sharking.
This political card game began last week with the announcement of a badly needed update to America’s plan for accessing the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Such action is a strong step in the right direction in ensuring America’s energy security, and relieving stress on global energy markets. But it’s important to recognize that this announcement is just a single move in a much larger game.
The administration’s concessions on offshore access represent a clear quid pro quo strategy designed to secure Republican support for a climate bill to pass through Congress in 2010. And taken at face value, increased OCS access appears to be a significant compromise coming from those who oppose continued use of traditional energy supplies. Like any good gambler though, opponents of this critical resource development have an ace in the hole.
These perceived concessions made on the part of the Obama administration are at the mercy of the Environmental Protection Agency. The president could later use his bureaucratic reach to delay and even negate these concessions, making his “policy shift” all smoke and mirrors. The agency has to date, demonstrated an aggressive desire to move forward with regulatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, despite Administrator Lisa Jackson’s public statements about her preference for a legislative solution. There is nothing to suggest that we will not see a similar tactic used to delay drilling indefinitely.
President Obama has made clear that he will pursue drastic emissions reductions that will greatly limit America’s ability to use fossil fuel resources of any kind. In fact, the administration’s current emissions goals of 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 will limit fossil fuel usage to 10% of the national energy mix by 2050. To put this in perspective, the U.S. currently relies on fossil fuels for over 86% of our energy needs.
What’s more, current regulatory requirements for exploration and production in U.S. waters are very stringent. This insures that drilling occurs in a safe and responsible manner, and that spills resulting from drilling are uncommon, if not entirely unheard of here. An environmental study is required to establish what the impact of drilling will be on the local ecosystem. This assessment can take years. And should the findings be significant, the drilling may not occur at all. While these studies are occurring, the U.S. will not see one drop of oil come out of any of these wells. Such draconian policies will inevitably stifle American growth and ignore the complex realities of the worlds growing energy demand.
The combination of an endless wait for offshore drilling and severe rules that limit our ability to use these resources make it clear that current energy policy is an attempt by opponents of energy resource development to concede little now, for great political gains down the road. Such a strategy will inevitably contribute to skyrocketing energy prices, erode U.S. energy security and force an unnecessarily complicated and costly transition to newer technologies that have not been fully developed.
“Giving” offshore drilling to advocates of expanded OCS access is no bargain if the concession is never realized. While many will claim this is a short term victory for advocates of expanded domestic production, it won’t take long for this house of cards to fall.
By Edward Lane
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot recently filed a lawsuit against the federal government regarding global warming a subject that is much discussed when people get together here in Wichita Falls it seems. How does global warming affect people in Wichita Falls? How will any changes in the government’s plans of reducing global warming affect jobs in Wichita Falls if it is determined that it is not man-made?
The national news media has headlined Abbott’s lawsuit as the first of its kind.
What is the basis for this lawsuit?
Abbott is challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that gases blamed for global warming threaten public safety.
More than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting the current man-made global warming scare, according to a new analysis of peer-reviewed literature by the Hudson Institute.
Dennis Avery, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, said, “Of the 500 scientists who have refuted at least one element of the global warming theory, more than 300 have found evidence that a natural moderate 1,500 climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to the current circumstances since the last Ice Age and that such warnings are linked to variations in the sun’s irradiance.”
Avery reached the conclusion that, “This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850.”
At stake are hundreds of thousands of jobs in Texas with energy companies if the Environmental Protection Agency is allowed to further regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases based on the global warming theory. How many jobs could be lost in Wichita Falls. That is yet to be known.
Also at issue are whether imposing costly regulations on energy businesses is a smart move as the nation struggles to emerge from recession.
Abbott stated in his petition for his lawsuit that, “The EPA improperly relied on the scientific conclusions of other groups, particularly the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to make the endangerment finding on heat-trapping gases.”
Texas Governor Rick Perry has agreed with the Abbott that the federal finding is inaccurate regarding global warming.
The issue of global warming exploded across the world with the release of the film that former Vice President Al Gore made called “An Inconvenient Truth” which won an Oscar. It has now been put in book form and become mandatory reading for many students in public schools.
Greg Abbott mentioned in his lawsuit against the feds that, “There clearly is lying, falsification, cover-ups etcetera that are going on here(in the federal government report).”
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is also attempting to strip the agency of its power to regulate climate-altering emissions.
Hopefully, the courts will listen carefully to Attorney General Abbott’s arguments carefully before deciding this important case for the citizens of the State of Texas. Abbott was born in Wichita Falls.
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